DOWNLOAD: Harry & The Potters and Uncle Monsterface, "The Perilous Fight Song" (mp3)
Day six:Singing of perilous fights; ticks and tocks; and the fastest hand dryer in the world.
Marty Allen: Day off, day off, it's our only day off for the whole tour! Huzzah! We smell bad!
Joe: My cousins are being quiet and trying not to wake me up. I wake up anyway though so I can hang out with them before Grayson goes to school. He’s in kindergarten so he reads me half of a book. Books are cool. He also teaches me how to work the shower. Very helpful. The last time we stayed here it took me a while to figure it out. That’s the worst. When you are all undressed and ready to take a shower, but then you realize you have no idea how to work this shower. You try pulling everything out and turning everything to every side and you can’t get water to come out of the shower head and if you do get water to come out it takes forever to get the right temperature. But when you can’t get water out you have to go put your clothes back on and talk to your host and ask them for help. It’s a total pain. I guess I would be fine with it if I didn’t have to put my clothes back on. I don’t like changing clothes much, that’s all. Well, I do when I can put on clean clothes, but if I have to put back on my dirty clothes then I’m done for.
Jesse: Our hosts, a different Potters aunt and uncle, have two small boys. Three-year-old Dominic joins us in the living room. He seems a little confused as to what this group is doing in his house, but is perfectly happy to show us around. When I mistakenly refer to the device on the upright piano as a metronome, he corrects me: “No, it’s a tick-tock.” Silly me.
Paul: Our three-year-old cousin Dominic offers to sing us “The Perilous Fight Song” and we get all psyched because this sounds like the best song EVER! Then he gets all shy and refuses to sing.
Marty Allen: Curious, we asked, “What's the perilous fight song, Dominic?” Dominic quietly sings, “Oh say can you see, by the dawn's early light!”
Jesse: Leave it to a kid to remake his world by focusing on the coolest part of the national anthem.
Paul: I think we’re all agreed that today’s song-for-the-day will be “The Perilous Fight Song.”
Marty Allen: I want this kid to rename all of OUR songs.
Joe: This morning Paul got directions to one of the best barbecue joints in the Carolinas. It’s on our way to Georgia, in Greensboro.
Marty Allen: Our internet search for the best BBQ around got us to a distinctly mundane-looking factory and distributor. A distributor who didn't want to give us any BBQ at all, and frankly did not seem amused by our antics. A few more misses and we finally stumbled across Gary's, where our enthusiasm far outweighed the mediocre food, and we were physically moved by the "fastest hand dryer in the world." It really was! You could see your skin move! And the corn dog nuggets are highly recommended.
Joe: They have lots of Coca-Cola and cigarette memorabilia on the walls. There’s a Phillip Morris sign that says, “Cure your sore throat with a pack of Phillip Morris.” Wow. But all the Coca-Cola signage makes me want a coke. I need a Coke. So even though I rarely ever drink soda I make an exception. Wow. I order a Coke with a side of stomach ache.
Paul: We spend most of the day driving. James is playing his Nintendo DS. Most of Uncle Monsterface is addicted to this game called Animal Crossing. Forgive my ignorance, but the last video game I was psyched for was Mario Kart on the N64. I guess in this game you get to be an anthropomorphized animal and you just kind of walk around and do boring stuff like clean the house and go shopping. Anyway, James is always playing this game and he’ll blurt out things like “I need to water my coconut tree,” or “Awesome! I can get a full set of fatigues for 125 bells.” Marty was paying off his virtual mortgage today. I’m wondering how it’s possible that adulthood has passed over this entire van.
Joe: We arrive at Lori’s and Marty’s house in Athens. Woo! They are awesome! They made us fish tacos! We party together!
Marty Allen: I'm justifiably freaked out to meet someone else named Marty. He takes the nickname from his last name, and to avoid confusion is temporarily allowing for the use of his proper name, "Nick." But people keep calling him Marty, and it makes me nervous.
